November/December 2021 - 7

MICHAEL H. WYSOCKEY, PH.D., P.E.,
PRESIDENT
Smart Development of Deep Foundations
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Smart development is the special theme
of this issue. What we mean by that is
smart design or construction that may
involve sustainability or resiliency. It's
interesting how sustainability concepts
that add to a project's efficiency and are
touted as " green " also save money. The 3
R's of construction that are promoted to
help further LEED certification efforts
are Reduce waste, Reuse and Recycle.
Recycling is the most obvious but
involves a real expenditure of resources.
Reducing waste and reusing are far
more efficient from an environmental
as well as an economic perspective.
Reducing waste happens with
design that is efficient, that is, that isn't
over-designed. To quote our old friend
Van Komurka on the senior staff at GRL
Engineers, we optimize by minimizing
wasted capacity (e.g., Komurka,
Wagner, Edil 2003). In the cover story of
this issue of Deep Foundations magazine,
Brian Heck presents a case history of a
large project of underground design and
construction for Lower.com Stadium in
Columbus, Ohio. The quality work is
clear on this 2,300 ft (701 m) secant pile
wall, with other challenges including a
tunnel penetration.
Waste is also controlled through
smart instrumentation of piling rigs or
the piles themselves. The instrumentation
systems in modern piling rigs are
a great benefit for quality control
(helping the rig operator) and quality
assurance (providing a report for each
pile), and are truly amazing. In another
feature, Dave Schoen and Greg Canivan
write about their experiences with
thermal integrity profiling for cast-inplace
concrete foundations. Making
smart piles in this way can greatly
enhance a quality assurance program.
Meanwhile, Sean Beirne-Lewis and
Jonathan Fullilove in the U.K. cover
smart anchors that are instrumented for
load and attached to a cloud-based
platform. This allows visibility of an
earth retention system in real time and
can be combined with inclinometer and
piezometer data to provide a clear
picture of the total performance of a wall.
capability, can pay large dividends to a
project too. In another feature, Rozbeh
Moghaddam describes bidirectional
testing with top loading that can be used
to greatly enhance the understanding of
load-settlement behavior of a deep
foundation element. While this type of
smar t test ing can cer tainly be
expensive, much knowledge can be
gained from where the load transfer
takes place along the deep foundation to
thereby optimize the piles to install just
what is needed.
The deep foundations world will continue to evolve with
smart developments. Design capabilities, new forms of
project delivery, rig and pile instrumentation and
innovation, and testing advancements are all coming
together to save time, save costs, increase sustainability
and resiliency and reduce environmental impacts.
The reuse of existing foundations is
another obvious example of efficiency
that is green for more than one reason.
For instance, this issue has case studies
from Takefumi Takuma that include the
retrofit of a seawall using press-in piling,
whose advantages also include reduced
environmental noise and vibrations.
Documenting recycled materials
has also become commonplace on LEED
jobs and needs no explanation. Testing
existing foundations for material
properties, and even load-carrying
The deep foundations world will
continue to evolve with smart developments.
Design capabilities, new
forms of project delivery, rig and pile
instrumentation and innovation, and
testing advancements are all coming
together to save time, save costs,
increase sustainability and resiliency,
and reduce environmental impacts.
This is what makes working in deep
foundations so exciting.
Contact Michael H. Wysockey at mwysockey@thatcherfoundations.com
DEEP FOUNDATIONS * NOV/DEC 2021 * 7
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November/December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November/December 2021
